Debate about dropping English as a mandatory course

The debate in China about keeping or dropping English as a mandatory course in middle school and high school has been going on for at least two decades. The support of keeping English is based on the fact that English is the de facto lingua franca in the world, although, contrary to a common misconception in China, English is not a mandatory course in all countries; among the 41 where it is not are France, Finland, and Poland. The opposing side claim that some college majors such as Chinese philology or research of ancient Chinese archives require no or very little English in future studies or work. Both sides got the basic facts correct and have strong arguments, leading the debate to a deadlock, while the government takes no action in changing the current policy that happens to be what the supporters want.

In fact, the solution is a simple one: attach a weight that varies between 0 and 100% depending on the major, to the English test score on the college entrance exam. For example, since high-impact work on Chinese philology is still mostly written in Chinese, the Ministry of Education or individual universities or colleges can assign a value of 0 or slightly higher to this weight. (If the weight is only 5%, who is willing to take time to study English? Well, imagine a high school student who grew up bilingual or speaks English as the first language.) For the major of ancient Chinese history, how about 20%? For modern Chinese history, 80%? Obviously, for any major other than these or a specific foreign language other than English (say, Spanish), the weight should be 100% or close to that. Assignment of the weight should be exclusively the work of the professionals and practitioners in this field, free of any lobbying influence from the general public and interference from politicians.

There are still lots of debates or disputes in the world that are zero-sum or nearly zero-sum. A relatively good solution is one that seeks compromises among contenders and balances their degree of satisfaction, to achieve an approximate equilibrium in this satisfaction. The advantage of my solution is that both sides are somewhat satisfying with it and complain the least, and the satisfaction and complaint are about the same in intensity on both sides.

Note: By no means am I suggesting categorically dropping English as a mandatory course. That would lead to total ruin of our future generation. It's the undeniable fact that some Chinese students are so incapable of a foreign language in spite of an extraordinary amount of time of study and that English is truly nearly useless in certain fields of study as of 2022 that prompts me to propose this practical and realistic solution for this year and some years in the future.

(The Chinese version of this article is scattered in Weibo 2022-11-06 and 2022-10-07 postings.)

dastardly

安倍晋三遇刺身亡，美国田纳西议员Steve Cohen称刺杀行为是a dastardly act，日本首相岸田文雄对刺杀行为的说法被英译为dastardly and barbaric。英语词dastardly不很常用，它兼有“怯懦”和“邪恶”的意思，似乎没有合适的汉语词同时体现这两个意义，有些词典译为“卑怯”，但这并不很恰当，因为其中的“卑”可能是“自卑”（如茅盾《烟云》“我的自杀是逃避，是卑怯”），但dastardly一定是对他人造成伤害的“卑鄙”、或更准确地说“邪恶”、“坏”。

许多不大常用的词或词组常让人想到历史上的名篇，如作“二十”解的score让人想到林肯的《葛底斯堡演说》（Four score and seven years ago[八十七年前]），ask not让人想到肯尼迪的就职演说（Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country[不要问你的国家能为你做什么——问你能为你的国家做什么]），而dastardly让人想到罗斯福在珍珠港袭击后到国会做的宣战演讲，称日本的袭击是unprovoked and dastardly attack[无端和卑怯的攻击]。今天，田纳西议员选用dastardly大概是巧合，但在他是巧合，在他的读者却产生了有历史意义的联想；英译岸田文雄选用这个词也有同样的效果。词汇本身是无辜的，只是它曾经被某个名人用于某个有名的事件而多生了一层与词义完全无关的阴影、或光环，迫使小心的后人在遣词造句时多一点考虑，如果你不想考虑，读者也许会考虑。